The Hindu : Venkatesh overpowers Abhijeet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 17, 2003

Sport

Sport - Chess

Venkatesh overpowers Abhijeet

By Our Special Correspondent

BIKANER NOV. 16. Unheralded T. Purushottaman and Puneet Jaiswal caused major upsets to share the spotlight while top seed M.R. Venkatesh posted a top-board victory over defending champion Abhijeet Gupta in an eventful fourth round of the National junior chess championship at the Veterinary College auditorium here on Sunday.

Venkatesh's vital victory kept him ahead in the company of Arghyadip Das and Purushottaman, all with four points.

In one of the early finishes on this day, Andhra Pradesh's Purushottam embarrassed International Master Poobesh Anand in just 25 moves.

Purushottam, playing white, castled on the queenside and launched a massive offensive on Poobesh's castled king on the other flank.

Purushottaman offered a bishop and then sacrificed a rook to raise visions of an early checkmate. Poobesh, placed hopelessly, tried to delay the inevitable by returning the rook but resigned soon thereafter.

Deep Sengupta was the other major casualty of the day. The Jharkhand lad went down to team-mate Puneet Jaiswal in 80 moves. Though Deep, a double International Master norm-holder, was having two rooks against a rook and bishop, he blew away his chances in the end game.

The battle between Venkatesh and Abhijeet lived up to expectations. In this double-edged Trompowsky game lasting 50 moves, both players had their chances. However, Abhijeet was short of time and this eventually proved decisive.

With an idea of forcing draw by perpetual checks, Abhijeet chose to exchange his rook for a bishop. But the ploy did not work as Venkatesh proceeded accurately and forced Abhijeet to give up when faced with a forced exchange of queens in the endgame.

Earlier, second seed Deepan Chakkravarthy drew with room-mate and fellow Madurai-player C. Praveen Kumar after an error-filled game lasting 39 moves.

The results (fourth round): Abhijeet Gupta (3) lost to M.R. Venkatesh (4); Deepan Chakkravarthy (3.5) drew with C. Praveen Kumar (3.5); Arghyadip Das (4) bt Akshat Khamparia (3); T. Purushottaman (4) bt S. Poobesh Anand (2.5); Deep Sengupta (2.5) lost to Puneet Jaiswal (3.5); Omkar Gajanan (3) drew with S. Arun Prasad (3); Soumitra Mujumdar (3.5) bt Swaraj Palit (2.5); Adway Chowdhary (2.5) lost to Soumya Ranjan Mishra (3); Abhay Sinha (2) lost to Jigar Thakkar (3); Rohan Shandilya (2.5) drew with Souvik Chakraborty (2.5).

Lintu Ramachandran (2.5) drew with Abhishek Das (2.5); Vinay Matta (2) lost to Roop Saurav (3); Ashutosh Sharma (2) lost to Ranveer Bhatti (3); Sohan Phadke (3) bt Anand Raj (2); Sher Singh (2) lost to Chaitanya Vaidya (3); Sagar Sadavarte (3) bt Manish Uniyal (2); Keshav Sharma (2.5) drew with Uttam Sharma (2.5); Dyansagar Gadgil (2) lost to Vedprakash Sharma (3); Sohan Das (2.5) drew with Abhudaya Rajpurohit (2.5); Amit Tiwari (3) bt Amiya Koradikar (1.5).

Premvardhan Sharma (1.5) lost to Arjun Tiwari (2.5); Kulmanpreet Singh (2.5) bt Avi Bagdi (1.5); Asif Kathwari (2.5) bt Bipin Kumar (1.5); Kartikay Batra (2) drew with Vishal Thakre (2); V. Sandheep (1.5) lost to Shrenhik Daklia (2.5); Vedprakash Srivastava (2) drew with Hemal Thanki (2); Janak Shah (1.5) lost to Harmeet Singh (2.5); Ravi Khanna (2) bt Mitali Patil (1.5); P.K. Arjun (1) lost to Rakesh Agarwal (2); Sumit Grover (2) bt Ashutosh Shukla (1); Nandan Buragohain (2) bt Abhinav Mathur (1); Rupesh Mishra (1) lost to Jalpan Bhatta (2).

Md. Zibran (1) lost to Usha Upadhyay (2); Shreyansh Daklia (2) bt Digvijay Ahuja (1); Aditya Saxena (2) bt Abid Bhatt (1); Kamlesh Soni (1.5) drew with Anmol Rajdan (1.5); Mohit Jethi (2) bt Dhruv Agarwal (1); Nikhil Dewal (1.5) drew with Nikhil Jain (1.5); M. Kathiravan (2) bt Monika Nishad (1); Tejaswini Sagar (1) lost to Ravi Sohani (2).

Aditya Rathore (1) lost to Manav Luthra (2); Ramdev Choudhary (1.5) bt Ayushi Palande (0.5); Shweta (1.5) bt Swati Rajpurohit (0.5); Shelendra Kumar Lata (0) lost to Suhail Mehra (1); Abhijit Beniwal (1) bt Ibrahim Beigh (0); Ritwan Sauntra (0) lost to Prateek Chalana (1); Priya Sadawat (0) lost to P. Anandkumar (1).

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